So we know that some things in life are pretty predictable, right? That the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. That Christmas will fall on December 25th every year. That my father will get pralines and cream ice cream every single time he gets ice cream.
It's just no deviation from this pattern. I've never seen deviation in my 28 years of life. Now you may be thinking, Elsa, that's really not that big of a deal. Like a lot of people get the same kind of ice cream every time.
There's a really big deal in my world, especially when I was younger, because it was kind of this window into self-awareness for me. It made me realize how naturally risk averse I am, how unwilling to take a chance or a bet I naturally am. Because this was something that my dad noticed and my mom noticed. And so what she tried to do in relation to the ice cream was get me to bet with her, to enter into a five cent bet.
She'd bet me a nickel and say, do you think dad is going to get pralines and cream ice cream? Well, I knew what the answer was. But I could not, with a hundred percent certainty, guarantee the outcome. And so I would never take the bet.
I would never take the risk. I would not go there. Now this story obviously has some specialness within the life of the Saul's family. We laugh about it often about how silly I was not to take a five cent bet.
Maybe I'd be five dollars richer today. But this has also really been kind of a place every time we circle back to this to remind myself how hard it was or how hard it still sometimes is for me to step into an unknown future. And so knowing that when Chad and I when I was here as part of the Foundry staff, we decided to preach a series on the fears that we have and the fears that we harbor. We made a list of all the kind of fears and I sort of gravitated towards the one that we called the fear of the unknown.
And what I ended up doing for us together was highlighting what happens when we are standing here, but we're having to look there. When we face this reality that we all inevitably face of being unable to guarantee the outcome of stepping into a unknown future. And so in order to sort of unpack this, to focus on this, what I had us do that day, and I believe it was February of 2016, if you can remember that long ago, was that I had us open up a story from the Old Testament in which God's people, who we know as Israel, were standing on the banks of the Jordan River and they were looking over into their next unknown. They were looking over across that river into the land that God had promised them.
And while they were excited about this, there was a lot of unknown wrapped up in it. They were excited about it because they had been traveling to this place for a really long time. You may remember that story in which they leave their captivity in Egypt and wander through the desert for many, many years. This story made up of many stories.
This story with one main protagonist, this guy we know as Moses, this faithful guy. This guy who had often very faithless people to where it was that God wanted them to go, which was there on the banks of the Jordan, seeing with their own eyes across the river, this land that had been promised to them. But by the time they wandered through the desert, by the time they got there, good faithful Moses was old. He was tired and it was, God told him he would not be able to cross over into their future with them.
He would die there on this side of the river. Well, knowing that and being the good leader he was, he decided to inform the people that he was leading about what would happen, that he would not be able to go with them. And what we see in scripture, what we saw that day in February, was that this set off a flurry of anxieties within these people who had been following after them, him. It sort of stopped them in their tracks, actually it stalled them in their journey towards their future, even one filled with so much promise.
Moses's news, what it did, it really tapped into their fear of the unknown. Well, Moses, as we have said, and as you know, was a wise guy. And so he still had some breath left in his lungs, and so he combined those two things, and he shared these words of wisdom. This is Deuteronomy 31 verses 2 through 8.
He said to them, I'm now 120 years old. I am no longer able to lead you. The Lord has told me you will not cross the Jordan River, but the Lord your God himself will cross over ahead of you. He will destroy the nations living there and will take possession of their land.
Joshua will lead you across the river, just as the Lord had promised. The Lord will destroy the nations living in the land just as he destroyed scion and hog, the kings of the Amorites. The Lord will hand you over to the people who live there, and you must deal with them as I have commanded you. So be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. The Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you. Then Moses called for Joshua as all of Israel watched.
He said to him, be strong and courageous, for you will lead these people into the land that the Lord swore to their ancestors he would give them. You are the one who will divide it among them as their grants of land. Do not be afraid or discouraged for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you.
He will neither fail nor abandon you. When I preached from that very scripture back in February of 2016, what I did was boil down Moses's words of wisdom to this. What Moses was saying to those people, what Moses is saying to us is that our journey and our journeys of faith is not about what we don't know, but about what we do know. That it's about the known, not the unknown.
What those Israelites knew and what we God's people today know is that God is faithful. That God will do what God says God will do. That in all places, that in all spaces and all circumstances, God is present. God will be with you.
He will not fail or forsake you. In his scripture, we saw how Moses so wisely spoke directly into the heart of those people's fear about what was to come next. We saw that as we opened up together the scripture. What we did not see together, but what I knew very deeply was that Moses that day was also speaking directly into my fear.
Because just days before, I think like 72 hours before I was to stand, I think it was right here and preached this sermon. I got a phone call that let me know that that coming June, I would no longer be the church planting resident here at Foundry, but that I would be sent elsewhere to be in ministry. However, at that point, they were unable to tell me where I would be going or what I would be doing when I got there. And so when I got up here to talk about this story about God's people standing here, but looking there about their questions and their fears in the face of a big unknown, I was very much standing in that same place.
I was facing a giant unknown of my own. They say sometimes you just have to preach to yourself and simply allow other people to overhear. Well, that's definitely what I was doing that day. And it's what I had to keep doing in the days to come, sort of reminding myself of this truth, that the way that it has been is the way that it will be.
The Lord goes with you now as before. That is what the faithfulness of God means. So take courage. I took that little quote out of my sermon and I sort of scrawled it on a giant yellow post-it note in Pink Highlighter and stuck it next to my desk in the Foundry offices so I could be daily reminded of this truth as I waited through the season of unknown.
I think somehow this post-it note has gained a frame and it now lives in the new Foundry offices for whatever that is worth. That is my legacy, I guess. But in time, in time like it happens, I did find out where I would be going after I left to Washita Parish. And I figured out how I was going to get from here to there.
And in July, I crossed the great divide that is I, Ten. And I made my home in Lafayette Parish and continue in life and in ministry there with my husband Brandon. And so day by day, my unknown sort of evolved into my known. And have you noticed that's really how it works.
That daily, daily, we step into our future. And sometimes in seasons like that when I just described, we take note of how that happens. But I think more often than not, our crossing over from here to there, from our present to our future happens in a kind of seamless and an ordinary way. It's not really until we look back on where it is that we have been.
Until we reflect on our journey, do we begin to see the shape of the path that we have walked. One of my favorite illustrators, her name is Mari Andrew. And she sort of brings this reality to be in one of her drawings. And it's simple, it's just a couple of lines and a couple of words.
But it's very powerful to me because what she does is she highlights the power of hindsight. Something that some of us call retrospect. Something that I think our faith, our scripture talks about in terms of awareness. Because in hindsight, what happens is I think we begin to grasp the intentionality in which what we felt was so random at the time.
We begin to see how there was intention and how it is we got from place to place, from season to season. In retrospect, we see with the 2020 vision that what we seemed so unsure about was surely the thing that needed to happen. The place we needed to be, the people with whom we needed to be in relationship with. With growing awareness of the character of our God and our past and our present and our future, I think we begin to understand that not only does God go with us wherever we go, but that God actually goes out in front of us.
Now this concept of retrospect has always been one of my favorites, maybe because I'm, goes back to that sort of not liking risk in the future thing, but for whatever reason I've always found it important to look back and to reflect. What's also happened I think is I've grown in my awareness, certainly not perfected sort of that spiritual art. But what I have understood is the importance of returning to scriptures that have spoken in a particular season. And so often in the last two years or so I've returned to this 31st chapter of Deuteronomy.
It's just like when we look back in time and see what we didn't see before, when we go back to scriptures time and time again we see what we didn't, or we're unable to see before. And so as I've returned to the 31st chapter of Deuteronomy, what I've noticed is that sort of nestled within Moses' words of wisdom was mentioned of God's habit of going out in front of us. Moses doesn't just say God will go with you as you go, but he literally says God your God is striding out ahead of you. Verse 8, do not be afraid or discouraged.
The Lord will personally go ahead of you. Over these years that has become one of the most remarkable. It's one of those wild ideas in all of scripture to me that God somehow goes out in front of us. He goes out in front of us and carves out space for us there in our future.
That's one of those things that it's hard to say how it happens. I don't know how to draw a diagram of this or even how to use the right vocabulary words to describe this. But I do think it's super cool that the Israelites, these guys who and gals who Moses was having to explain once again what God's faithfulness meant is they were standing there on the banks of the Jordan shaking in their boots. These were the same people who already had incredible language about what it meant for God to go out in front of them.
In the book of Exodus, which you may know is the story of their wilderness wanderings after they left Egypt, they talk about the Lord like this. This is Exodus 13. They say the Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them along the way in a pillar of fire by night to give them light. So they might travel by day and by night.
Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people. Now to me, this could mean that there was a literal pillar of fire by night and a literal pillar of clouds by day. And I love to think that that's what really happened. One of the incredible images that opens up and explodes in our imagination when we turn to the Old Testament.
But I also love to think that maybe this was simply their way of describing their deep and their unwavering sense that God was going before them. And that if they followed after God, God was going to get them where they needed to go. And that where they needed to go was probably better than where they were. Now these were people who talked about this who trusted, who trusted that the path that God was carving out in front of them was the path they needed to walk.
Was the path they needed to walk that they might become better versions of who they were. That they might become more fully who God intended, who God created them to be. These were people who trusted that the path that God was lighting up in front of them, if they walked that path, that they would be more equipped to do the work that God had for them in the future. They were people who trusted that ultimately following behind their God was the way to participate in God's mission in the world.
Well from my time here as a part of Foundry and from having the privilege of watching your journey even from afar, from occasionally getting to pop my head back in, what I know is that you all are people with a deep and unwavering sense that God our God is going before you. That He is carving out space in front of you and that He is asking you to join Him there. Now there's lessons in trust and in awareness or ones I carry with me daily and ones I will always carry with me. But here we are today in the significant day in the life of Foundry, the last day we're shipping here in Stirlington High School.
And so on this day my prayer for you is that if you haven't already taken the time to take a few minutes to look back, to see the shape of the path that you have walked, to see how all the highs and the lows, all the mess and all the beauty have come together to get you here today. My prayer for you is that you move forward into your future as you cross over into the land that God has laid out for you, that you would continue to trust that the God who goes before you is the God who always has your best interest in mind. To trust that the God who goes before you is leading each of you and maybe most important, all of you together, to be the best version of yourself that you can be. To deeply trust that the God who goes before you is doing bigger and more extraordinary things in and through you than you could ever, ever imagine.
Well speaking of bigger and more extraordinary things than we can imagine, this resurrection of Jesus that we sang about just a few minutes ago that we celebrated not all that long ago on Easter Day. It's certainly one of those things because in my mind, there is no way that Jesus's friends who watched him die on the cross, those disciples who carried his very dead body to the tomb, those faithful women who went to anoint his body at the tomb, could ever imagine that their teacher, that their friend, that their savior who was very dead would be very alive three days later. They could not imagine that, but you know, and I know that is what happened. That when these disciples were facing a huge unknown, maybe the biggest unknown in all of human history, when they were trying to figure out what it meant to move into a future without Jesus, Jesus proved to them that he in fact would never leave them, that there would be no such thing as a future without Jesus.
And in a really cool way, he proved to them that he would continually, continually be going out in front of them. This is the way that the Gospel of Mark talks about this whole thing happening. It says that when the Sabbath day was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices so that they could embalm Jesus. It was very early on that Sunday morning and as the sun rose, they went to the tomb and as they walked there, they worried out loud to each other.
Who will roll back that stone from the tomb? It is so large. When they looked up, they saw that it had been rolled back and they were able to walk right in. When they did, they saw their young man sitting on the right side dressed all in white.
They were completely astonished, completely taken aback. He said to them, do not be afraid. I know that you're looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the one that they nailed to the cross, but he is not here. He has been raised up.
You can see for yourself that this tomb, this place is empty now. So go, go on your way. Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there exactly as he said.
A friend he is going ahead of you, just like he said he would. So go, go and find him there. What do you pray with me? She says, you are who you say you are.
You do what you say you will. You lead out in front of us. You hold our hands as you walk with us and you even come behind us when we need you to. For your presence in this community is tangible.
We can feel it. We thank you. We thank you for that. Allow us to keep tapping into that, your spirit, tapping into it that we might continue to be the people who you asked us, who you created us to be.
We remind us that taking a risk, stepping out into an unknown future is exactly what you want us to do, is exactly where you are calling us. We thank you. We love you. We worship you.
Amen.